Articles
I cannot not dance – a short tale of gratitude
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Story and photo David Lisle
T
he tibia is the second largest bone in the human body. When I broke mine in a climbing accident early 2023 my world seemed to collapse around me. My life revolves around dancing, cycling, running and climbing – things from which the invalid is wholly excluded. After the fall I took shelter in a thicket of literature, mostly avoided the postsurgery narcotic stupor and eventually managed to escape the prison of regret that generally follows accidents. With the addition of time and a mixture of patience and perseverance, my physical faculties mostly returned. It would be trite to call the process a journey, yet in this case, it almost feels appropriate. This article is not intended to be a year in review, a story of redemption or some heroic comeback tale. Its aim is rather more prosaic. The process of recovery was deeply affecting and I thought it worth chronicling the gratitude I experienced throughout. As a cripple I felt this strange awe for the splendour of my former life. And as my mobility gradually returned I was filled with this deep appreciation for that which we able bodied take for granted. It was glorious to walk again when my cast came off, and taking those first, tentative steps, I was as proud and happy as a toddler, and probably as graceful. When www.echo.net.au
I was sufficiently mobile to once more experience the joy of dance it was pretty wobbly and painful, but it felt that much richer.
Solace in taking a few turns In November I attended an all-day dance workshop in one of the area’s beautiful old halls and returned home in the evening with the news that it had been the best day of my life. This might seem like hyperbole, yet it is a felicitous account of my experience. I just felt so profoundly alive. In recent years I have become increasingly preoccupied with dance. I cannot not dance. I count the sleeps (rarely more than four) until the next dance group. And when life threatens to overwhelm me, I find solace by turning inward, selecting some choice tracks and taking a few turns in the kitchen. I often wonder about dance and why a seemingly frivolous activity is so powerful and pervasive in our modern world? There are two main approaches to this question. The first starts with the individual and supposes that one chooses to dance for pleasure, exercise, aesthetics or some other personal reason. This perspective sees dance as one activity among many that an individual might choose for the benefits that accrue from it. An alternative explanation, more anthropological and
sociological in orientation, sees dance as a social phenomenon, a means by which humans bond and societies cohere. A third viewpoint, currently gaining traction across disciplines, posits that the human capacity to dance (shared by some birds and mammals) is an evolutionary strategy critical to the development of our distinctively large interconnected brains. An infant, for example, is born hopelessly dependant on caregivers whose support they must secure by recognising, remembering and recreating the patterns of movement that successfully connect the newborn with nourishment. Reading bodily movement, what we call body language, is also vital to social and psychological development. Viewed in this light, dance is less an activity than an evolutionary key. I don’t really know why dance is such an effective vehicle for processing difficulties and celebrating triumphs. But I often find myself on the dance floor among a mass of swarming bodies, lost to the centrifugal force of a spin. And as I surrender to the vortex, whirling on and on, the world becomes an abstraction, something out there but disconnected and utterly irrelevant. And this feeling, this sensation, somewhere beyond nothingness, makes the question of why we dance rather irrelevant. We just do. And for that, among other things, I am grateful.
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